How to produce a picture that shall impress an audience with its inexhaustible reserve is a secret that remains with him who has the power. So, too, with the other pictorial qualities discussed in this chapter. We know of no formulas by which the mysterious art-emotions can be aroused. Yet if directors and spectators alike ponder over these mysteries, it will surely help them to separate the gold from the dross.
Let us vision an ideal photoplay. It is entrancing, yet restful, to the eye. Its composition is both vigorous and graceful, as harmonious as music. Our sympathies are stirred warmly by the experiences of the persons in the story. We are held in keen suspense as to the dramatic outcome. And we get also the more subtle art-emotions. Our souls are shot through by the poignancy of fixed and flowing designs. We are fascinated by these designs at the same time that our fancies pass through and beyond them. The visible work of the artist is only a mesh-work through which our imaginations are whirled away into rapturous regions of experiences unlived and unexpressed. Such transports may be brief, yet they are measureless in their flights. Our attention swings back from these far flights into a quiet response to the delicacy of arrangement of line and shape, of texture and tone, of blending and weaving and vanishing values. We feel an exquisiteness too fine for understanding, which tapers away at last until it is too fine for the most sensitive feeling. And during all the while that we are rapt by the poignancy, the imagination, the exquisiteness of the master’s production, we feel that a rich reserve lies beyond our grasp or touch. We cannot quite soar to the master’s heights, or plumb his depths, or separate the airy fibers of his weaving.
Yet, when such beauty comes to the screen, who shall say that it is a miracle, that the manner of its coming is above every law and beyond all conjecture? And who shall say that the hour of its coming has not been hastened by the million spectators whose judgments have been whetted and whose sympathies have been deepened by taking thought about the nature of art?
Transcriber’s Notes
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[Page 14]: “propellors” was printed that way.
[Page 120]: “Pavlowa” was printed that way.